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How to Get Your Family Cleaning Schedule Organised

21 March 2016

You may find that when it’s time to get your whole household organised enough to start cleaning, everyone seems to have something keeping them too busy to pitch in. With the usual madness, and kids branching out and establishing their own social circles earlier in life, it’s becoming more and more difficult to find time even on the most laid-back Sundays to get everyone organised and active in their cleaning duties. Yes, it seems easier to let the whole issue slip out of your control and clean only when the state of your home is screaming at you to get to work, but there’s a much less stressful solution which will not only maintain the cleanliness of your home, but allow everyone the decent amount of free time they want.

Regular maintenanceJust as your body needs a minimum amount of nutrients and vitamins every day, your home needs a minimum level of maintenance to keep it in the condition you want. Once you spend a little while thinking things out and writing down an organized plan to give your home the work it needs, delivering this minimum amount of care will soon become part of your usual weekly routine, rather than feeling like a bland block of chores that you can do a little later. When you look around and see the effects, it will become easier than you’ve ever dreamed of to maintain.

Divide choresObviously you can’t just find a print-off plan, as every house has different needs. However, a weekly plan for cleaning and other chores can usually be divided into four categories; accounting and bills, laundry, meals and grocery shopping, and domestic cleaning. You should probably start by getting a pen and paper out, then writing down absolutely everything that needs to be done around your house before putting them in specific categories. That will give you an idea of who can be assigned what job, depending on how serious or difficult the tasks are. Sort the individual jobs from things that need to be done daily to jobs that aren’t needed as often, which you can then use to type up a comprehensive checklist. For example, under your “daily” heading you may have a load in the dishwasher, tidying up the kitchen, one load of laundry, and at the end of the day a short, general sweep of anything that can be tidied up or cleaned. Your “weekly” section will have jobs like having a look in the check book and paying any of your outstanding bills, shopping for groceries, running a vacuum around the whole house, and cleaning up your bathrooms.

Stick to your planIt may take some careful thinking, but before long you’ll have a full, functional plan covering absolutely everything that needs to be done around the house. Once you have your list, put it on the fridge or some other area where everyone can see it. This should also include who has to do what jobs. If you have young children or teenagers, the suggestion at hard graft will be met with resistance and complaints, but this can be remedied in most situations with a simple rewards scheme. As your teens grow up and begin to move out, they’ll appreciate you setting up a system such as this when they have to organise their own homes. If you know you have someone in your household who’s particularly lazy, it’s usually just a case of getting most of your family on board, increasing accountability.

With your chore plan clearly set out where everyone can see it, there’ll be more pressure on the person who has to do their chores before everyone can go to the theme park or cinema!